Astronomers were given a spectacular show on the sun as a "solar tornado" made its way across the surface.
As if it could not make up its mind . . . darker, cooler plasma slid and shifted back and forth above the Sun's surface seen here for 30 hours (Feb. 7-8, 2012) in extreme ultraviolet light. An active region rotating into view provides a bright backdrop to the gyrating streams of plasma. The particles are being pulled this way and that by competing magnetic forces. They are tracking along strands of magnetic field lines. This kind of detailed solar observation with high-resolution frames and a four-minute cadence was not possible until SDO, which launched two years ago on Feb. 11, 2010. So it's our 2nd Anniversary!
Source: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw.php?v=item&id=87

Time-lapse animation showing enormous tornado-like vortices on the Sun's limb as seen by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory between 2012-02-07T08:00:00 and 2012-02-08T23:00:00. Each image in this animation was taken at 36 second intervals.
credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
source: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?3919

Discovered using NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory satellite, this colossal twisting mass is made up of superheated gas at a temperature of between 90,000 and 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit.
Over the course of three hours, this behemoth reached up from the sun's surface to a height of 125,000 miles, or roughly half the distance between the Earth and the moon. The hot gases were whipped up to nearly 186,000 miles per hour. In comparison, the wind speed of terrestrial tornadoes generally reaches a paltry 100 miles per hour.
Scientists have previously seen smaller solar tornadoes with other sun-observing satellites but this one — spotted in September 2011 — is thought to be the first one ever filmed (left). Since then, researchers have seen at least one more solar tornado, an Earth-sized twister seen in the video below.
These tornadoes often precede events known as coronal mass ejections — huge eruptions of charged particles that blast out of the sun's surface with tremendous energy. Such flare-ups are thought to be related to interactions among the sun's magnetic field lines, whose corkscrewing movements also shape the solar tornado.
The top images and movie were presented at the National Astronomy Meeting 2012 in Manchester, England on Mar. 29.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/gigantic-solar-tornado/
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A circular storm as wide as five Earths was captured churning on the Sun's surface on Sept. 25, 2011, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. Time-lapsed multiple filter views are looped in this video. - Original Music by Mark C. Petersen, Loch Ness Productions

"Bad Boy" active region 1339 continues to flare. At 20:27 UT a solar flare peaked at X1.9. X-class flares are pretty massive and are major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.
The location of this sunspot/active region is still not quiet Earth directed.
Credit: NASA SDO

Aurora are colorful lights in the night time sky primarily appearing in Earth's polar regions. But what causes them? The culprit behind aurora is our own Sun and the solar plasma that is ejected during a magnetic event like a flare or a coronal mass ejection. This plasma travels outward along with the solar wind and when it encounters Earth's magnetic field, it travels down the field lines that connect at the poles. Atoms in the plasma interacts with atoms in Earth's upper atmosphere.

One instrument watching for the comet was the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which adjusted its cameras in order to watch the trajectory. Not only does this help with comet research, but it also helps orient instruments on SDO -- since the scientists know where the comet is based on other spacecraft, they can finely determine the position of SDO's mirrors. This first clip from SDO from the evening of Dec 15, 2011 shows Comet Lovejoy moving in toward the sun.
Comet Lovejoy survived its encounter with the sun. The second clip shows the comet exiting from behind the right side of the sun, after an hour of travel through its closest approach to the sun. By tracking how the comet interacts with the sun's atmosphere, the corona, and how material from the tail moves along the sun's magnetic field lines, solar scientists hope to learn more about the corona. This movie was filmed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in 171 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically shown in yellow.
Credit: NASA/SDO
This video is public domain.
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An intense solar flare observation by yours truly on October 22, 2011. Especially watch the dark "blobs" falling downward into the flare from above. These are not dense blobs of cool matter - they're actually voids
in plasma! Planet-sized bubbles of low density, moving through the 15
million-degree plasma. This warms the cockles of my heart.
Credit: NASA SDO

Today we were treated to a very special sight; the Moon came in between the SDO satellite and the Sun. For 1 hour and 41 minutes team SDO observed the Lunar Transit. This event only happens a few times a year but gives the SDO Team an opportunity to better understand the AIA instrument on SDO and give it a fine tune.
This video shows today's Lunar Eclipse in a variety of wavelengths the AIA instrument observes. Each wavelength shows us a different temperature and layer of the Sun, allowing us to study the Sun and its activities.
Credit: NASA SDO

The Chinese New Year certainly started with a bang this morning. At approx. 04:00 UT a strong and long duration M8.7-class solar flare exploded from Active Region 1402.
NASA SDO captured this event and thanks to ESA/NASA SOHO and NASA STEREO Behind spacecrafts, we have also learned of a very quick moving Coronal Mass Ejection. The CME is traveling at approx. 2,200 km per second and the Goddard Space Weather Lab predicts the arrival of this CME on earth to be January 24, 2012 at approx. 14:18 UT (+/- 7 hours).
It also shows that Mars will get hit too, several hours after Earth.
These kinds of events can cause problems for spacecrafts in geosynchronous, polar and other orbits passing could be affected by the cloud's arrival. In addition, strong geomagnetic storms are possible, so high-latitude sky watchers should be alert for Aurorae.
Credit: NASA SDO

The black and white images show the magnetic field - the field is pointing toward us where it is white. The leading spots all have an intense negative polarity and the following spots are mostly positive.
The two polarities are pretty well separated and fairly stable, which is
why this region hasn't produced even more dramatic activity. The biggest
explosions happen when complex magnetic regions annihilate each other.
The glittering moving features around the spots follow the crests of magnetic waves. Not much new flux is emerging into this mature region, but there is a lot going on in the vicinity - and just about everywhere else too if you look carefully. The surrounding filamentary structures are weaker field regions that appear bright in intensity.
The movie with the granular yellow background shows the Sun's surface
brightness. Sunspot group 11339 is already large when it rotates around
to the front side of the Sun. The umbra is the darker, cooler part where the magnetic field is very strong and vertical. The surrounding orange
penumbra appears very dynamic because waves in the weaker horizontal magnetic field make it look like material is flowing out of the spot.
Watch how the darkest regions develop in time. The largest spot is more than five times the size of our Earth. What you cannot tell from these
pictures is which direction the magnetic field is pointing.
Credit: NASA SDO

The video from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager onboard SDO shows the Active Region 1393 from January 6 through January 8 and demonstrates how sunspots can quickly change shape and size.
Sunspots are planet-sized magnets created by the Sun's inner magnetic dynamo. Like all magnets in the Universe, sunspots have north (N) and south (S) magnetic poles
Sunspots, temporary disturbances in the Sun's photosphere, are the most visible advertisement of the solar magnetic field. They appear dark because temperatures are considerably lower than in surrounding areas. Sunspots occur where the magnetic field lines emerge from the inside of the Sun to form expanding loops above its surface.
Sunspots usually show up as small forms that are irregularly shaped, and grow within days or weeks to their full size. While they can last weeks or months, they do eventually disappear, often by breaking into smaller and smaller sunspots.
Credit: NASA SDO

After several days of a quiet Sun, the solar activity is now high again. Big sunspot AR1429, which emerged on March 2nd, is crackling with strong flares. This morning brought the strongest so far--an X1-class eruption on March 5th at 0413 UT.
This flare propelled a bright Coronal Mass Ejection into Space, which will probably miss Earth, but hit Mercury and Venus.
Even if this CME misses, high-latitude sky watchers should still be alert for auroras in the nights ahead. An M2-class eruption from the same sunspot on March 4th produced another, wider CME that might yet intersect Earth. The cloud is expected to deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetic field on March 6th at 04:30 UT (+/- 7 hr).
Take a look at the forecast from our friends at the NASA Goddard Space Weather Lab:
http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/downloads/20120305_085600_anim.tim-den.gif
Credit: NASA SDO

A beautiful video showing a full side to side passing of an active region and the movement of sunspots as seen by the HMI instrument.
The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager extends the capabilities of the SOHO/MDI instrument with continual full-disk coverage at higher spatial resolution and new vector magnetogram capabilities.
Credit: NASA SDO

This is the sunspot region AR 1429 that generated several major solar storms recently. The video covers nine days (March 4 - 12, 2012). Notice how the spot is almost always changing as its magnetic fields realign themselves. The images are white light images called intensity grams.
Credit: NASA SDO

Over the past 24 hours we have seen some beautiful solar events. None of them have a direct impact on Earth, but they are astonishing to watch. It just shows how an active Star our Sun really is. Far from boring.
On December 8, 2011 a twisting prominence eruption occurred on the lower eastern limb. The view through the AIA 304 angstrom filter shows us this beautiful eruption.
In the early hours of December 9, 2011 SDO observed a little bit of a different eclipse. An erupting cloud of plasma was eclipsed by a dark magnetic filament. The eruption is still on the far side of the Sun, behind the eastern limb and is slowly moving forward and over the limb sometime next week.
In front you can observe the filament of relatively cool dark material floating across the Sun's surface in the foreground. That filament partially blocks the view of the hot plasma eruption behind it.
Credit: NASA SDO

December 7, 2011; Today's Sun in various wavelengths showing various temperatures and layers of the Sun. Not only that, but we also added the Sun's magnetic field lines to the view. These images were taken at approx. the same time
We start off looking at the 6,000 degrees C. Photosphere. See the various sunspots on the "surface" of the Sun?
Now let's transition into the region between the Chromosphere and the Corona, at about 1 million degrees C.
From there we go into a composite of three different wavelengths showing temperatures up to 2 million degrees C.
And at the end we add the complex field of Magnetic Field lines to the various active regions.
And who says the Sun is boring?
Credit: NASA SDO
Thanks to Steele Hill

And within just a few hours the very massive filament (see post from earlier today) is approx. 1/3 shorter. This movie shows the developments from 13:00 to 16:00 UT on November 14, 2011.
A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface. Prominences are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun's hot outer atmosphere, called the corona. A prominence forms over timescales of about a day, and stable prominences may persist in the corona for several months, looping hundreds of thousands of miles into space. Scientists are still researching how and why prominences are formed.
The red-glowing looped material is plasma, a hot gas comprised of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. The prominence plasma flows along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the sun's internal dynamo. An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma.
Credit: NASA SDO

Three energized active regions that were lined up latitudinally (along a North-South line) rotated into profile view at the Sun's edge and put on a good solar show (Oct. 21-23, 2011). They were observed in extreme ultraviolet light. The magnetic forces of the active regions were feverishly connecting and reconnecting the entire time. Towards the end of the clip, the middle region spurted off a burst of plasma and then the upper one erupted with a flare, followed by cascades of bright loops reorganizing themselves above it. SDO's high resolution images and fast cadence of images let us see a level of detail never before possible.
Credit: NASA SDO

April 21, 2011 marks the one-year anniversary of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) First Light press conference, where NASA revealed the first images taken by the spacecraft.
In the last year, the sun has gone from its quietest period in years to the activity marking the beginning of solar cycle 24. SDO has captured every moment with a level of detail never-before possible. The mission has returned unprecedented images of solar flares, eruptions of prominences, and the early stages of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). In this video are some of the most beautiful, interesting, and mesmerizing events seen by SDO during its first year.
In the order they appear in the video the events are:
1. Prominence Eruption from AIA in 304 Angstroms on March 30, 2010
2. Cusp Flow from AIA in 171 Angstroms on February 14, 2011
3. Prominence Eruption from AIA in 304 Angstroms on February 25, 2011
4. Cusp Flow from AIA in 304 Angstroms on February 14, 2011
5. Merging Sunspots from HMI in Continuum on October 24-28, 2010
6. Prominence Eruption and active region from AIA in 304 Angstroms on April 30, 2010
7. Solar activity and plasma loops from AIA in 171 Angstroms on March 4-8, 2011
8. Flowing plasma from AIA in 304 Angstroms on April 19, 2010
9. Active regions from HMI in Magnetogram on March 10, 2011
10. Filament eruption from AIA in 304 Angstroms on December 6, 2010
11. CME start from AIA in 211 Angstroms on March 8, 2011
12. X2 flare from AIA in 304 Angstroms on February 15, 2011
Be sure to vote on your favorite SDO clip here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/multimedia/VC-1st-light.html
Voting goes from April 21 until May 5.
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?10748
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